Hurrah for Dr. Madden!

Last night, when Eve brought this article to my attention, she asked, “Do you remember Tom Madden?”

I imagined John Madden. “Yeah.”

“You know he’s an expert on the Crusades?”

How nice for John Madden, I thought. “No.”

Sensing that something was wrong with my brain, Eve said, “Thomas Madden, from the SLU history department?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah.” I said. I think I covered myself pretty well.

Turns out a few years ago Dr. Madden wrote an article that appeared in the National Review, called “Not Dead Yet,” about the Naked Archaeologist’s The Lost Tomb of Jesus. Calling Simcha Jacobovici a “Naked Archaeologist,” mind you, is like calling me a “Bejeweled Pro Wrestler”–he is neither an archaeologist nor is he naked. “Fully Clothed Failure” seems more apt.

Regardless, it was published in March 2008 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the release of the Discovery Channel’s misguided airing of James Cameron’s goofy documentary, and it seems to fit within the scope of this site.

I came across a discussion of Madden’s Crusades book on the JREF forum and got interested because Bob and I are vaguely acquainted with him. I haven’t read the book, but I did wonder based on some of the quotes if he was writing from a bit of a pro-Catholic point of view. He does teach at a Jesuit university–not that that necessarily means anything. It’s not as if there’s a “go-easy-on-the-Catholics” publishing requirement. And again, I haven’t read the book, so it’s not fair of me to judge it. I just felt a vague uneasiness.